U.S. Open: Ken Venturi's 1964 victory was a scorching one

The Associated PressKen Venturi pauses to wipe perspiration from his face during the final round of the U.S. Open in 1964.

BETHESDA, Md. — The human brain can face grave damage when a person’s core temperature reaches 105 degrees Fahrenheit. On a Saturday afternoon in 1964, when Ken Venturi made the walk up the hill from the 18th green toward the massive clubhouse at Congressional Country Club and into the locker room, his temperature was 106 degrees.

He lay down on the floor in the locker room as doctors and officials buzzed around his nearly lifeless body trying to tell the skinny 33-year-old from San Francisco that continuing on in the 100-degree heat and humidity was suicidal.

With 18 holes to go in the 36-hole finale of the U.S. Open, Ken Venturi was literally on death’s door.

“He didn’t look good at all — at all,” Congressional member Frank Murphy recalled about that locker room scene between rounds. “It was a total blank stare. That’s the best I could categorize it. It was like nothing registered.”

Murphy, now 70, is one of the only two living members who were in that locker room. Even 47 years later, the retired developer won’t go into more detail about what Venturi looked like; he would rather it stay private. The one voice who gave in to Venturi’s demand to keep going? A general practitioner and club member named John Everett, who said he would stay by Venturi’s side until his better angels told him otherwise.

Venturi somehow not only finished, but won that U.S. Open.

“I had 18 salt tablets,” Venturi remembered Monday morning at the site of his only major championship. “Today, you know what they say? That could kill you. Really.”

Venturi is 80 now. Congressional Country Club is one of the few things he has left, along with his wife Kathleen. Most of his friends — and most of the people who helped his near lifeless body around the final 18 holes of the U.S. Open that year — are dead. Yet, when he is here, he is spry. He cracks jokes with sons and daughters of the men and women he used to know. He zips around the grounds with Kathleen in golf cart No. 58 with “VENTURI” on the front.

That he can enjoy his status as a legend here is in no small part due to Everett.

“He turned to my father after another doctor turned him down and said, ‘Dr. Everett, can you keep me going?’” said the doctor’s son, Richard Everett. “My father said he’d try. My father gave him the benefit of many years of practice and dealing with heat stroke and dehydration.”

A small army, led by Everett’s father in a helmet with the Red Cross logo on it, accompanied Venturi during the final round. One marshal carried an umbrella to help shield him from the blistering sun. Another had a walkie-talkie, prepared to make a grim call for help. Also there were then-USGA executive director Joseph Dey, and Venturi’s playing partner, a 21-year-old named Raymond Floyd.

“I got off the (locker room) floor and I do not remember walking to the first tee,” Venturi said. “I remember the putt on No. 9, but I don’t remember the front nine until I started coming into it. I got on the scale when I arrived at the course. I weighed 172 pounds — exactly what I weigh today. And when I got dressed and ready to leave, I got on the scale and I weighed 164 pounds. I had lost 8 pounds that day.”

With salt tablets, water and ice packs, Everett helped keep Venturi going. Richard, now 67 and living in Arizona, remembers hearing about how his father had kept the U.S. Open champion going through incredible conditions. The doctor and the patient became close and stayed in touch for the years after that memorable Saturday afternoon (the next year the U.S. Open went to its current four-day format). So much so that John Everett flew out to attend Venturi’s second marriage.

“It was really kind of amazing, everywhere he went, people would bring that day up,” Richard Everett said. “My father became quite a known person in sports after that. He was a 5- or 6-handicap, but he was a doctor. He made house calls. He never brought it up, he was a closed-mouth person who knew what he had done and thought that was satisfaction enough. He didn’t need the notoriety, but it was there nevertheless.”

Inside the majestic Congressional clubhouse, there is a dimly lit, wood-paneled corridor on the way to the men’s locker room. Inside the glass case are the relics of that day: Venturi’s hat, a set of irons, a photo of an exhausted Venturi accepting the trophy. The scorecard — with its lightly penned 3s, 4s and 5s — shows the physically brutal truth from June 20: Venturi had just enough energy to put down his score.

He may not remember how he got to the end, but the 18 salt tablets and the 18-hole care of John Everett?

“Everywhere he went, they would say, ‘This is the guy who saved Ken Venturi,’” Richard Everett said. “A year, five years, even 25 years later. Up until the day he died. In his obituary, there was something about it. Everybody remembers him from that.”